80 replies to this topic

[DDH69]

So I've started my cabinet build.  I'm sure it will take some time, but then I'm in no hurry and want to "tinker" with many of the pieces.
 
My cabinet will be based on a Williams wide body.  I'm getting dimensions from the plans available around the place as well as measuring my Indiana Jones machine.
 
I've sourced most of the parts I need and currently have them scattered all over the floor.  Today I started cutting out some of the body, hopefully more to go over this long weekend.

 


 
So what am I planning:

• 46" Teac TV, found it second hand and is 2mm wider than a standard wide body internal.  Hence I'll use 16mm cabinet material to gain the 2mm
• 28" Computer monitor for the backglass
• Old 17" monitor for the DMD
• LedWiz board to drive button globes and soleniods
• 10 Soleniods to make some noise
• A keyboard emulator for all the inputs
• 3 x mercury switches for nudging
• A plumbob for major tilts
• Home made power supply with 8 independent adjustable power rails (4 for fans, 4 others for other devices)
• Home made delay pulse timer for powering on 3 x screens
• 2 x stereo amplifiers
• Standard speakers near the DMD
• set of speakers in the base if the cabinet
• fans pulling air our the back
• fans pushing air in the bottom
• Buttons for flippers, magna lock, credit, buy in, escape, plunger
• PC

I will continue to post updates as I go.

[Nemo]

Nice ! I see some great parts there ! Following this one .......

[DDH69]

So the Teac TV got de-cased and the clean up continues.

 

The TV itself is a Teac 46" untra thin edge-lit LED/LCD TV LE4618HD.  I got it second hand from a pawn broker (Cash Converters).  I was searching for the largest TV that I could fit in a standard wide body cabinet without too much manipulation.  I found that 46" was not a popular size any more.  In fact I struggled to find one new in a shop, so it was over to Google and the classifieds.  I found this one just by chance.  I was very lucky, the store advertised it in the on-line classifieds allowing me to find it, and they'd just halved the price they had it listed for as they were struggling to sell it.  Good news for me all round.

 

I spent a bout an hour in the store checking that the screen face was not gouged, dented, etc physically.  Then I plugged in my laptop and ran a series of tests looking for dead pixels, checking resolution, etc.  Despite the price coming down I still only wanted it if it all worked.  This did amuse the folk in the store, not what they're used to experiencing.

 

So, 10 minutes after getting it home I started pulling it apart.  After all the dead bugs had fallen out, I removed the stand, the stand framework, then the edging.  Removal of the edging has made it 595mm high (well wide for a cabinet).  This is great news given that with 16mm cabinet panels I can make the inside dimension 596mm, leaving a 1mm gap to play with!

 

I did find that after removing the frame to make it smaller the front "glass" started to fall off.  I had to cut the frame to only leave the smaller sides and reattach it.  This seems to be holding the front "glass" in place.  This should become easier now that it will spend the rest of its life laying in its back.

 

My plan is to build a small wood frame around it and mount using the existing M6 mounting points which are spaced at 400mm, so a nice stable size it would seem.  I can then lift ad move it via the frame.  I hope to even be able to use the frame to lift the TV in a similar way that you'd lit a playfield - we'll see how that idea turns out!

 

I have removed the outer case which had all the surface mount "bubble" type buttons for manual control and the IR sensor.  So far I've cut these out of the case with side cutters.  I plan to mount 7 new push button switches on a piece of "L" aluminium and have a full set of buttons on the wooden frame I build.  These will be accessible from inside the cabinet if required.  I will also add cabling in parallel to the on/off button and "press" this at power up via reed relay on a delay circuit.  I will remove the power switch and directly wire the power to a new power cable and back to a power board.  I was going to leave the speakers on just in case I wanted them later, but I'll have to take these off for my wooden frame to fit.  This will be OK as I plan to use the headphone jack to drive an amplifier and the speakers I'll place in the base of the cabinet for playfield sounds.

 

Now I'll try for some images.  (I struggled with these in my first post in the thread, so attempt #2.  I'm sure adding these should be easy, but its new to me)

 

 

 

[DDH69]

And then I spent most of the day cutting panels and placing the first cut-outs for the coin door and buttons.  As I measured everything out for the lock down bar it was lovely to open up a genuine wide body machine and measure 

 

A few shots from today.

 

 

Now things will quieten down for a while.  Its a long weekend in Adelaide and I'm off out tomorrow.  I can't let the family support dry up by locking myself completely in the games room! 

 

[Nemo]

This is going well ! Yeh, did those pawn guys think you're just a tad picky ? I guess when you

explain people that it's for a virtual pin they go: huh, what ? Or worse, pinball, huh ?

[DDH69]

This is going well ! Yeh, did those pawn guys think you're just a tad picky ? I guess when you

explain people that it's for a virtual pin they go: huh, what ? Or worse, pinball, huh ?

 

It was very different for them, they were quite interested.  They had never seen a dead pixel test before.

 

I explained about the virtual pinball machine and ended up with 3 staff members listening in.  It was good fun.

[DDH69]

While the building of the frame for the 46" TV continues I've been concentrating on my power supply / power on delay.  I decided to build my own power supply for a couple of reasons, firstly, I enjoy it, and secondly I could get all the flexibility that I want.

 

So what did I build;

- 90W output across all rails (ability to easily expand with a larger transformer should I need to later)

- 4 adjustable power outputs for cabinet fans.  I want to control fans driving air in through the base, fans on the PC, fans extracting from the back of the cabinet and fans extracting from the top of the back box.

- 4 adjustable power rails, 2 x 1.5A max and the other two at 3A maximum

- All adjustable outputs driven by LM317T voltage regulators

- A delay circuit that drives 3 reed relays to allow all 3 screens to powered on automatically a few seconds after the cabinet is powered up

 

A few images ....

 

 

One of the 1.5A power rails is set at 12v and will run the delay timer and other 12v items like the lights in my cabinet buttons via the LEDWiz.  One of the 3A rails will be set at about 15v to drive solenoids via the LedWiz. The other 3A rail will drive my two stereo amplifiers for back box and cabinet sound.  The other rail is really there for things I haven't fully thought of yet, who knows maybe some Wii remotes to give me 3D at some stage, etc.

 

I have built all of this on a small piece of 12mm MDF to allow for easy mounting and moving if required.

 

Anyway, back to more laying out and drilling of all possible holes before I start assembling the cabinet.

 

[Nemo]

Nice ! Love the homebrew psu, yeah that delay circuit is REAL handy !

[DDH69]

While the cabinet build takes shape down stairs the PC has been built.

 

 

Its mounted on  temporary piece on MDF to protect the shape of the case for the moment.  I grabbed a standard mid sized PC tower case as you can see from the box for the case above.  I then stripped it right down and drilled out a lot of rivets just leaving the base (former side) and the back to guide the add-in cards.  The PSU stays where it was and uses all the existing mounts.  I then made a couple of small cuts and folded the drive cage area up at 90 degrees.  I added a couple of "L" pieces of aluminium to keep things in shape.  The fold allowed me to use the already setup fan mounts.  Now I have 2 fans pushing air, one pulling at the back and a CPU fan on the big cooler.  The CPU fan will be controlled from the PC mobo while the 3 other fans will be controlled from my homebrew PSU and voltage adjuster to keep the noise to a minimum.

 

You might notice the wi-fi card.  This will allow me to connect to my home network and server.  As you can see no DVD to keep space to a minimum and a SSD mounted to the right of the fans.  Plenty of room for a nice graphics card after I see if its required.  The mobo has HDMI, DVI and SVGA onboard and can run 3 screens.  If I don't get the right performance I will just add a nice powerful graphics card.

[allknowing2012]

Dumb windows question - dont you need the dvd to install windows? and I dont suppose there is any way around paying the $100+ for windows in our cab pc ..hmm..

[blashyrk]

You can install windows from a Usb stick

[DDH69]

I did install Windows from a DVD drive borrowed form another machine, then just unplugged it.  Once installed I can do everything via USB, USB connected drive, or better still the network.

[viktory2k1]

Looking good. I just started mine the 20th. Didn't get too far. I am new to this and am in much pain(hence the 4:40am post)

[DDH69]

Well a lot more woodwork today.  I think I now have all the holes I can determine for the main cabinet body sides and base before I form it up into a box.  My plan has been to drill and hole cut all I can while it still fits under the drill press.

 

I started on the holes and mountings in back box today as well.

 

I'll get a few photos up during the week.

 

One new challenge from the weekend work.  I drilled out and cut the holes for my plunger, now I just need to find what screws fit the 3 mounting holes.  I tried 5mm which was close, so thought it would be 3/16, went and bought some, but no.  I suspect it may be 3/16 with a thread I don't have.  Probably time to go and see my father who is retired fitter and turner, he is my "go to guy" for problems like this.

[DDH69]

So, new toys turned up during the week, my speakers.  Just some cheap car speakers, smaller ones for the backbox, larger for the main cabinet.

 

 

During a couple of evenings I also made my power switch.  It is designed to mount internally and be used through a 19 x 40mm round ended slot in the front right underside, much like the real thing.  I struggled to find an external mount for a USB 3.0 port, so I made my own.  It will be accessible via a 19mm hole in the base of the cabinet.  Why USB 3.0, well I wanted the speed for when I do things like use TruImage to take a snapshot of the machine before I try new and stupid things.  Something I've learnt after many years of setting up mediacentres with PCs as devices.  There are occasions when blessed are the backups!

 

 

Because I want to drill and cut all the holes I can while I have flat panels I needed to do a rough layout and then start cutting.  You can see the rough layout here.

 

 

The last one is the backbox with a few holes cut for fans.  Yes lots of fans running slowly to ensure there is no noise.

 

Soon it will be time to start building some it into a shape that looks like a box!  Perhaps tomorrow for some of it.  Still lots of measuring and calculation for mounting the screens in that backbox though.

 

[Nemo]

Nice ! It's always a good idea to measure twice before building anything, and yeah backups have saved me many times with my pin,

it's relatively easy to screw up something software wise. Make sure that the "Lift/Frame" construction for your playfield give's easy access

to the rest of the electronics in the cab, you will have to tinker with them once in a while, it's a pain removing the playfield each time.

 

This is going to be a great pin !

[DDH69]

A new cabinet is born ......

 

Today was the day when all of those flat parts got folded up and became a cabinet!  It now actually looks like I'm building a pinball machine.

 

I temporarily mounted my door and lockdown bar assembly.  Found out I was 1mm out with the right hand lock bar assembly mounting bolt, the head just doesn't fit along side the door.  Next weekend I'll stretch the hole sideways by 1mm and no one will ever know (OK except those reading here).  I placed the glass guides and sat the side rails on.  Another small problem emerged, a couple of my internal braces are in the wrong spot for the side rail mounting holes (what idiot measured those!)  Anyway, another issue to resolve next weekend, not the end of the world.

 

I built the frame for the back screen as I built the backbox.  I had one slight error while building that part, the old trick of placing the frame and forgetting that the top of the backbox mounts inside the sides.  Hmm, measured it and screwed it together 16mm (side wall width) out because of this.  Fortunately I realised very quickly and managed to move the frame while the glue was still wet, because its screwed from the inside the false screw holes can't be seen as they are still under the bracket - ultimately not harm done, just mild heart failure.

 

Anyway here are some pics.

 

 

I also got to lay in the playfield TV, it looked great.  More frame work to be done before it will be ready to mount, but coming together well.  It seems that my idea of being able to lift the playfield like a a real machine may really be possible.

 

I was going to mount the legs this weekend but got distracted by the backbox build.  Oh well, there's always another weekend.

 

[viktory2k1]

Hi, Looking good! A few questions:

Is your whole cab MDF? Can't tell from the pics.

How did you get that TV to lay in there without modding the plans?

I see you are using a smaller backglass tv, good choice, thats why mine looks so huge, because it is! lol

I can't tell by the pc but no onboard WI-FI? Looks new as far as I can tell.

I found a really nice(and expensive) USB 3.0 mountable hub on Amazon, 4 ports. I think it was $25.

 

 

How do you adjust the fan speed? do you have a controller? or your home made PS? I have a fan buss controller for 4 fans and has 4 temp probes for auto or you can set each manually. It's in my old PC case, takes up 1 drive bay. I probably won't use it, never did, not even sure it works. I will try.

I can see this is not your first build, makes mine humorous to follow(especially with the latest screw-up).

Later...

Vic

[DDH69]

Vic, glad to hear I'm not the only one having fun    Thanks for the USB 3.0 ports pointer, I'll have a look

 

This is my first build, just one of those people who plan a lot and spend too much time on their toys.

 

My cabinet is all 16mm MDF, not sure if this is the best idea, but its working for me so far.  Certainly as a lot of people point out, heavier.  As I said 16mm MDF, not 18mm which is 3/4", its the extra 4mm internal on the width that lets my TV fit flat, as I said a lot of planning.

 

Yes, brand new PC build.  I went for the gaming mobo and traded off the wi-fi as its mainly the gaming feature I want.  $25 for wi-fi was an easy add on.

 

My fan control is going to be via the home made PSU.  As I've said in my post about the PSU, it has 4 separate power rails that I can adjust the voltage on individually.  I will have four knobs within reach inside the coin door.  I'm into some electronics so this is fun for me, if electronics and soldering is not your thing, then a fan control module is the right answer.

 

Whatever you do, keep planning, building and never finish your build just slow down, enjoy and keep adding on - at least that's my plan anyway.

[Talantyyr]

Great build so far! Coming along nicely!

Btw, why do you need to control your fans? Noise? Both of my fans are so quiet i can't hear them, i've tried them outside of my cab. I'm sure when they're inside the cab and you're playing a game they can't be heard at all.